Ping An Insurance (Group), China's second largest insurance company, recently announced publicly its intention to team up with Tencent Holdings, the third largest Internet company in the world, and Alibaba Group, the operators of China's largest e-commerce platform, to deliver online financial services, an extremely innovative move.

Ping An's putative alliance with two of China's leading Internet companies represents a clear change in corporate strategy among Chinese companies. Not only is this move bold and ambitious, it also paves the way for much-needed international expansion. Only a few years ago such an alliance would have been considered highly unlikely.

Ping An's announcement also illustrates far more coherent strategic thinking and planning than what is often associated with Chinese companies. Good management is often not as much about building on a company's strengths but more about understanding weaknesses and recognizing that in order to grow an organization it may well need the help of others.

Tencent and Alibaba will not only enable Ping An to reach hundreds of millions of younger potential customers, they should also allow Ping An to piggy back on the "exciting", "fun" and even "cool" image that both corporate brands enjoy.

However, what remains unclear is the way these organizations will fit together. Most joint ventures fail due to a clash of corporate cultures and management styles but this may not present such an obstacle here if there is little actual merging or collapsing of the organizations.

Clearly, Tencent and Alibaba provide an excellent opportunity for Ping An to tap into a new audience, but how should Ping An then present its insurance products within this context? Should they keep the same name and simply offer "Ping An" insurance via Tencent and Alibaba or should they seek a new name or even combination of names as well as a more emotional brand image?

The key ingredient in brand success for financial service providers will always be "trust" that is often a derivative of "industry experience". It is, therefore, wise for Ping An to retain some or all of its current corporate brand name and image. Tencent and Alibaba have also realized that they alone could not succeed in the insurance business or any part of the financial services industry due to their lack of "industry experience" combined with their existing "fun" image.

So, how can Ping An retain its core brand values of "trust" and "experience" yet also attach some of the "fresh" image of Tencent and Alibaba? Any new name, especially one that does not resemble Ping An at all, will cause confusion and, therefore, positive association will fail to bind in the consumer's mind. However, simply inserting the Ping An brand name to Tencent and Alibaba's websites may also fail to achieve sufficient association, leaving the audience to presume that this is just the same old, boring insurance brand.

The author is a visiting academic at Tsinghua University and a Researcher at Nottingham University's School of Contemporary Chinese Studies. mike211_2@hotmail.com